The point is: when her father turns off lights they can’t see without, drives to Jersey for cheap gas, eats the hard bread heels, Vera understands that these are the habits of a man who lived two years on cornflakes. Of course she knows from living with Lowell that a cornflake diet can just as easily have the opposite effect, but the real point is: her father is generous with other things. Not for one moment can Vera remember doubting he loved her.
And besides, Rosie and Norma couldn’t have found a more flattering light. With its fading, they actually seem to grow slimmer, more graceful. Their hands move surely among the strips of green pepper, the perfect circles of radish like the coins of some newly discovered country. Even as the dying light blurs the edges of things, it highlights their textures. Rosie and Norma’s bare arms touch and the contrast in the surface of their skin is astonishing. What fifty years can accomplish!
Rosie and Norma lean closer, reminding Vera that a few years ago they were closer: as close as that. Then even Vera called them Gram and Gramp because their connection to Rosie seemed the central one, the hopeful one with its promise of continuance. Now things have fallen off. Rosie calls them Dave and Norma and complains that when she stays overnight they don’t let her do anything, by which she means talking all night on the phone.
Nonetheless Vera knows Norma and Rosie are still closer to each other than either of them is to her. Even their comfortable silence sounds a reproach: if she were part of the scene, she’d be chattering like a finch. She can’t help being jealous; it’s like feeling the whole world except her is in love. So when Rosie starts talking, Vera’s relieved; it’s as if she’s out with two lovers and is grasping at conversational straws to keep them from falling into an embarrassing embrace.
“I might quit summer program,” Rosie says.
“Sweetie, why?” says Norma.
For a while it doesn’t seem as if Rosalie’s going to answer. Finally she says, “Carl.”
“What about him?” asks Norma.
“I can’t tell you,” says Rosie. “It’s too gross.”
“Try me,” says Norma.
“All right,” Rosie says. “But promise you won’t be completely grossed out and blame me?”
“I promise,” says Norma.
“Okay. Remember, though. You promised. Well…It was water-gun day. We all got to bring our water guns in. Around lunchtime mine ran out and Carl said he’d fill it for me. He took it to the boys’ room and when he brought it back it was kind of warm and…oh God, I can’t say it…he’d pissed in it!”
Norma flinches. “Please, the word is urinate!” Then she bursts out laughing. “You know what?” she says. “Carl likes you.”
Four things occur to Vera, all nearly at once. One: Rosie’s never even mentioned Carl to her. Two: Rosie already knows Carl likes her, because Three: She’s more sure of herself than Vera was at her age. Which may have something to do with Four: When Vera was Rosalie’s age, Norma wouldn’t have been half so forthcoming with the information that Carl liked her. Yet only now does Vera understand that Norma’s reticence had nothing to do with jealousy, rivalry, meanness, but rather with the same protectiveness Vera feels for Rosie. Despite her firm belief in liberal attitudes toward children and sexual play, Norma would have hesitated—and perhaps rightly so—to encourage a daughter’s affection for the kind of boy who’d pee in her water gun. With a granddaughter, it’s different: perspective, more humor, and forty years to have learned that such boys may turn out to be the best.
“The dumb part is,” Rosie’s saying, “me and Carl have so much in common it’s unbelievable. We feel the same about everything! He likes Michael Jackson, I like Michael Jackson. He hates Boy George, I hate Boy George. He loves Dungeons and Dragons, I love Dungeons and Dragons. He loves raw spinach and hates cooked spinach, I love raw spinach and hate cooked spinach…isn’t that unbelievable?”
“Unbelievable,” says Norma.
Vera imagines Rosie and Kirsty in their Dungeon Master’s cave with its magic doors; now every one of them swings open, revealing Carl surprised in the act of peeing in a plastic gun. She’s lost the thread of Rosie and Norma’s conversation. It all grows fuzzy, until suddenly—perhaps it’s the light—she sees herself as a character in Our Town or Carousel, any one of those dreadful stories about people who die and come back to watch a soft-focus, tear-blurred version of life without them.
“Can I bring the salad in?” she says. For all the response this gets, she could be one of those ghosts only Topper can see.
“Dinnertime!” Norma sings out.
Following her mother into the living room, Vera notes how Norma’s embroidered blouse and dirndl skirt match the general decor, except that the clothes are fake peasant: machine work on cotton polyester. “Sit!” orders Norma, and Vera does, opposite Dave, while Rosie and Norma carry in platters and pitchers and bowls.
Though the fan’s doing nothing about the August heat, Norma wouldn’t feel she was feeding them without a hot meat meal. The food matches everything else: Jewish international. The lamb stew with potatoes and limas reminds Vera of cholent. Its muttony smell evokes Berbers dipping into a common plate. They should be cross-legged on a carpet on a tent floor, elbow-deep in grease.
Norma fills their plates and, without waiting for them to taste it, says, “How’s the stew? I got it from that new book Daddy got me, Cooking Moroccan.”
Vera used to think that such questions were Norma’s demands for flattery and homage. Her reputation as a cook has never been in doubt. Every time they go out—to a restaurant, to the homes of Norma’s colleagues and their old friends from the Party—Dave compares the cooking unfavorably with his wife’s. The noise of all that dutiful public praise kept Vera from hearing. How long it took her to understand that Norma might need reassurance, too.
“Great,” Vera says, and Rosalie says, “Really great.”
“Dave?”
“It’s all right,” says Dave, and Vera thinks, No wonder she’s got to ask every time.
“What’s wrong?” asks Norma.
“The meat’s a little stringy is all.” Dave’s teeth seem to be bothering him; it’s hurting him to chew.
“Now you’re getting like your granddaughter,” says Norma, “She’d be happy if we never had meat.”
All eyes turn toward Rosie, who’s meticulously spearing limas and scraping gravy off her potatoes. “You know what they feed cows?” she says. “You know what’s in this stuff?”
“Protein,” says Dave, but he’s smiling. Norma, too. For though like the rest of their generation they believe in the life-giving sustenance of animal flesh, they approve of Rosie’s vegetarianism, in which they see a nascent understanding of the harmful excesses of capitalism.
“It really is terrific,” says Vera, chewing extravagantly, heroically, as if for them all—for Dave’s teeth, Rosie’s fears, Norma’s need for approval and love. And it is; it’s delicious. The hot food makes Vera break out in a sweat and even that feels pleasant. After a while Norma clears her throat and says, “Dave, guess what Rosalie’s been doing in summer program.”
Eyebrows bristling, Dave focuses on Rosie. Vera wonders if her mother means Rosie to tell about Carl and the water gun, and so is relieved when Rosie says, “We went to the planetarium.”
“Was there some kind of special show?” asks Norma, though probably she already knows. She’s been retired from her counseling job for a year; but much remains, especially this mode of inquiry, this dogged pursuit of information her students were too timid to offer or didn’t even know they had.
“It was mostly for the little kids,” says Rosie. “Sesame Street garbage. Kermit and Big Bird up in the sky.”
“For the children!” says Norma. “Isn’t that wonderful!” Dave’s gone back to eating. There’s a silence, then Norma says, “Guess where Daddy and I went this week.”
“Where?” says Rosie.
“The Whitney, they have the most fabulous show. The Ashcan School. Gropper, Ma
rsh…”
Vera thinks of muddy colors, subway riders with grimy faces, shopgirls’ legs splayed on spinning amusement-park rides, yet understands that Norma’s affection is complex: part esthetic, part political, part nostalgic. Probably Ashcan prints were what young Lincoln Brigaders tacked up on their bedroom walls.
On the wall above Norma’s head is a picture Dave painted just after McCarthy got him fired from the public-school system. It’s a crowd of faces, red, brown, and black, crudely done; it looks like a UNICEF card. Vera has almost no memory of that time. Used to keeping secrets, they kept that one from her so well her only recollection is of watching daytime TV, of Norma switching channels back and forth from Joe McCarthy to her favorite cooking show, Dione Lucas, until some shadow of the senator seemed to linger on the cook; even years later, when Lowell watched Julia Child, Vera would feel queasy and have to leave the room. It’s all still there, thinly camouflaged, lodged in neuron and synapse and cell. When Vera thinks Carmen’s Holy Trinity sounds like a congressional committee, what else could she have in mind?
Dave’s painting was only an interim distraction until he found work at the sporting goods store. Vera’s never understood why, of all jobs, he picked that. He never showed any interest in games, and once at a dinner she heard him telling friends how sports were popularized by the early industrial bosses, who found that their wage slaves functioned better if allowed to toss a ball around a few minutes a day. There was just that one time at a picnic for the guidance people from Norma’s school; someone brought a ball. Vera’s still astonished by the agility with which Dave jumped and dunked and made the net swish with shot after perfect shot.
That’s what Vera wants to ask about, but Dave won’t want to answer, no more than he wants to talk about Reginald Marsh. The one story he’s still interested in telling is the story of the Spanish Civil War, and they’ve heard it a hundred times. She remembers how Dave used to charm new people with those stories and wonders if he ever wishes she and Rosie were new people.
The last time she urged him to tell them was that first night she brought Lowell home. Her hope was that Dave and Lowell would recognize each other as fellow storytellers, and that her parents would see that Lowell was, in his own hillbilly way, as deeply in love with the spirit of the people as they were. But all that came of her hopes was one silence after another. It wasn’t easy steering the dinner conversation in a middle-class Jewish household to polo, but Vera kept turning it till Lowell could tell his buzkashi story: hordes of mounted Afghans playing free-for-all polo with no rules and a dead goat with its head whacked off instead of a ball. Norma got up from the table, leaving them to Dave’s disapproval; in his day, you traveled to save the world from Fascism, not to watch the lumpen play ball. Vera served up Lowell’s cornflakes from heaven, but had to tell Dave’s Russian cornflake story for him. Which was why he got angry and called her up; and she told him the news about Rosalie, which she hadn’t been able to squeeze into all that silence.
Afterward she felt so sorry for announcing it that way, she sat down and read Karl Marx. All her friends had read Marx in college, searching their Modern Library Giant Das Kapital for some clue to Vietnam. But Vera was glad she waited till she was pregnant, with all her emotions so close to the surface. She remembers reading with tears streaming down her face, moved by that enormous, unshakeable faith in the coming of the Revolution, its comforts so similar to what she knew of faith in the Messiah. Some things can be done to hasten its arrival, but not much; and besides, it will come no matter what.
This is what she wants to tell her father: “Dad, don’t worry! You and the boys in the Lincoln Brigade, you did what you could! History will resolve itself; the prisoners of starvation will arise without us!” But she knows it’s false comfort, false cheer, the same misguided impulse that makes her want to write Bigfoot nicotine-fit stories for that kid craving cigarettes on the subway.
“Guess what happened to me today,” she says, then stops, afraid they’ll think she’s imitating Norma and unsure of what she intends to say next.
“What, dear?” asks Norma.
“Here’s another good one,” says Rosie. “Now Mom’s going to tell you how she’s got ESP.”
“Hardly,” says Vera, aware that the silly smile on her face could be mistaken for modesty, as if Rosie were praising her excessively.
Norma leans forward, Dave leans back. Vera wonders why they signify interest with opposite motions and whether this is what Plato meant by finding your complementary half.
“What’s the story?” says Dave.
And Vera tells them. Dave and Norma keep interrupting, making her explain. When she gets to the part about the lemonade stand, they play their own version of Where-Did-This-Story-Come-From? “You had your little lemonade stand,” says Dave. “Little Miss Entrepreneur at five cents a glass.” Norma’s in her element, extracting information, though Vera feels less like a troubled student than a witness at a trial. So Vera testifies on, and by the end is almost satisfied—if not by the logic, at least by the conviction of her story.
Not so her parents. When she’s done, they both have the foolish irritated looks of cashiers who’ve totaled and retotaled every item and still can’t get it right.
“I’m not surprised a bit,” Dave says. “I’ve always said your mother has ESP. When you were off traveling and I’d be sick with worry, she’d know just when you were going to call. Years ago, forty-five years ago to be exact, she’d wake up in cold sweat here in New York; and later it would turn out we’d run into some fighting.”
Vera wants to say that sensing when your daughter is due to call or sweating when your husband’s fighting in Spain is nothing like looking at a photo of a house and guessing the names of its occupants. But now it’s Norma smiling that silly, flattered smile and neither of them are listening.
“So,” Dave says at last. “What’ll you do about it?”
“Nothing!” Vera wants to shout. “Sit tight and let history absolve me!” But of course she says nothing of the kind. For one thing, she can’t imagine what history might do in this case except turn the Greens out of their house and fill it with fifty welfare families. For another, it’s not true. She’s already taken action.
“I called,” she says. “I talked to Mrs. Green. I’m going there Monday.”
“That’s my girl!” says Dave, and Norma gives him a look Vera knows. She’s about to say something technical or political and is already waiting for him to correct her. “But if they’re suing you…” she says. “Can you mention this to the lawyers…?”
“Bloodsuckers!” says Dave. “Let the lawyers mention it to her!” Vera thinks of Leonard Villanova: he did have a kind of ticklike quality. She’s imagining a story about a lawyer for a corporate blood bank busted for taking his payment in kind—BLOOD-LUSH LAWYER APPEALS VAMPIRE VERDICT—when she hears Rosie say, “Don’t mind Mom. Touchdown will be any minute.”
Dave takes this as evidence that Vera can’t be trusted to pilot them home, so what follows is an argument about his driving them. Vera would like a ride—the streets are deserted; not even she would dare the front of the train at this hour—but feels duty-bound to refuse. Finally Norma settles it by pushing them into the car.
Dave circles Prospect Park, over to Fourth, then down Atlantic to Court. Vera wonders why he’s taking such a circuitous route, then realizes it’s his old route to work, mapped for minimum rush-hour traffic. There’s no need to go this way now. Near Livingston Street, he starts doing a strange thing. At every turn he brakes and says, “Do I go right here?” or “Do I go left?”
“Yeah,” Vera mutters through clenched teeth. He’s driven this way half his life. Turning, she looks at Rosie, who shrugs and leans forward and rests one hand on Vera’s arm. Vera knows her parents’ aging isn’t their fault. Why does it make her so angry? And suddenly she longs to cry out, Dad, pull over! Park right there between the Board of Education and the cuchifritos stand! Cut the motor and we’ll sit in the d
ark car and listen to your war stories all night!
But by now they’re already on Montague Street, and Vera can’t wait to get home. Dave pulls up to the curb, kisses Vera, then turns to kiss Rosie. “Rosie, you be a good girl,” he says, and to Vera, “Call us Monday when you get done seeing those people.”
“I’ll see,” Vera says. “If I have time.” Then she’s out of the car and at her door so fast that for a moment Rosie seems to recede like a small retro-rocket falling further and further behind Spaceship Mom.
EVER SINCE VERA QUIT smoking, she’s needed to plan her arrival home, those first few minutes once pleasantly occupied by her coming-home cigarette. Sometimes magazines help stave off the homecoming panic. But tonight, in the absence of tobacco or glossy print, she decides to have another drink, not so much for the alcohol as for something to clink and hold. Then she’ll ask Rosie’s opinion of Dave’s new driving style. She’s hoping that Rosie will reassure her with the wisdom beyond her years that, Vera’s learned from the media, is the curse and the blessing of the single-parent child. She remembers how, after one of Lowell’s departures, Rosie had said, “If he were my old man, I’d just sit tight and wait for him to get lonesome.” How old was Rosie then? Six? Seven? And Vera was comforted by that?
So perhaps it’s just as well that while Vera’s still playing with the lock, Rosie says, “Can I use your phone?” and takes off before Vera can reply. Vera decides against the drink and follows Rosie into the bedroom to eavesdrop. Vera’s tuned in for surprises; but Rosie isn’t saying much, just listening—from what Vera can gather—to some story Kirsty’s telling, set in a pizza parlor. “Yuck!” says Rosie. “Anchovies?” What’s wrong with anchovies? Vera wants to know. Could she and Lowell have imprinted her with that terrible anchovies vs. Pampers fight they’d thought her too young to understand? By the time Vera’s persuaded herself that anchovies are an acquired taste, she’s abandoned the pretense of hanging up clothes, so that when Rosie says, “Mom, could you leave for a minute, everybody hears everything around here!” she agrees, even though it’s her room.
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